before and after

My father died on a rainy Tuesday night. As I sat in his room and listened to his breath slow to its eventual end, I counted the raindrops as they beaded on the window. He was all I had in the world and then he was gone. It seemed so uncomplicated.

I knew that there would be a lawyer. I knew it because we were Italian-American, and because my father had spent almost fifty years working for one of those families among us. A guy named Jason showed up at my father’s house the day after the funeral. No longer just the overgroomed grandson of my father’s lifetime counsel, he was now a lawyer himself. I remembered him as an awkward teenager who got drunk at family weddings, and now he would tell me my father’s secrets.

“Your father,” he looked over at me with a weak smile, and I hated the pity in his eyes. “He wanted you to know that he loved you very much, and only kept the truth from you for your own protection.”

My mind raced. The truth? I thought I knew what my father did for a living. He had never volunteered information, but over the years he began to answer questions if I asked them. He said that he worked for someone high on the food chain and was protected from the really rough stuff. And that he had been present on occasions when violence was done, but he had not been the man tasked with doing it. I was not sure that I was ready to hear that he had been lying to me for all of these years, and instantly felt shame for suspecting him.

Jason the lawyer took some papers out of his briefcase and started to read.

“In June of 1978, a baby girl was born to Loretta Booth. Miss Booth was not married to the baby’s father and had no living family. When she died a few hours after your birth, the father decided it best that you be adopted by your father.”

The story was always this: She had died giving me life. They loved each other but never got around to getting married. And that one day she was gone and I was here and he focused on me. Before and after.

“My father is not my father?” I rolled the thought around in my head for a few seconds, but it would not stick. Then Jason handed me a document, a birth certificate. My date of birth, my mother’s name. And something else.

“Your father is Carmine Caruso.” He paused for dramatic effect, or maybe to see how the words landed on me. My father is my father’s boss? The Boss. I had been to hundreds of Caruso family gatherings over the years. I spent my entire adolescence filled with envy at the glamorous lives of the Caruso kids, both of them now living stereotypical and unenviable lives of middle-aged gangster’s children.

“Mr. Caruso was involved with your mother but had a wife and two children at the time you were born. When your mother died, he wanted to be sure you were well cared for. That you had a nice life.”

“I have siblings?” I asked, almost like a reflex, and Jason gave me a puzzled look. He handed me a little black book. I opened it and found, in my father’s familiar handwriting, entries for payments dated from just after my birth and spanning over forty years. The payments start small, $1,500 here, $4,000 there, but gradually become larger and more frequent. When I get to the final entry, I am met with a total: $1,638,500.

“What is this?” I handed the book back to him. He refused to take it.

“It’s your inheritance. You’ll notice that the payments stop just over two years ago, when Mr. Caruso died. Your father decided to that it would be best to wait until his own death to pass these funds to you.”

He didn’t want to tell me. He didn’t want the Caruso kids to know.

“In combination with your father’s assets, including the value of this home, you’re looking at a considerable windfall. You can spend it, invest it, do absolutely nothing with it. I’ve been hired by your father and Mr. Caruso to help you do whatever you want without raising any red flags with the taxman.”

With that, he left a small stack of paperwork for me to sign and got up to leave.

“Take some time and think about it. All you have to do is decide what you want to do.”

For years I thought that if I only had a bunch of time and no financial worries, that I would write a novel or finish the dozen half-completed paintings in my spare bedroom, start a nonprofit, maybe open a hyper-curated vintage boutique. Instead, I do a little writing in my journal, maybe every other day. I doodle with my watercolor pens. I take walks. I read books. I drink coffee. After what felt like a lifetime of grueling servitude that yielded little compensation and minimal dignity, “What do you do with your days?” has become a strange question. When people ask me that now, I tell them that I’m a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist. Depending on the level of nosiness, I sometimes say that I joined a cult.

What I never, ever, tell people is the truth.